WWE Has Been Badly Bitten By The Injury Bug Once Again

SportsMoney
I examine the effect that sports have on business...and vice versa.

WWE has once again been bitten by the injury bug, reigniting the debate about whether its superstars work too many matches or if they need an off-season.

Credit: WWE.comCredit: WWE.com

Wrestling statistician Chris Harrington compiled statistics on the number of matches all WWE superstars wrestled in 2017, and the findings showed that many of those superstars were injured last year and/or have recently dealt with a significant injury. The Jan. 8 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter also compiled a completely updated analysis of who wrestled the most matches last year, and you'll see that most of them have recently missed time due to injury:

Jinder Mahal (185): "The Modern Day Maharaja" spent the last several months of 2017 dealing with a shoulder injury but still wrestled more matches than anyone in the company:

Baron Corbin (181)

AJ Styles (179): Styles suffered an ankle injury in route to WrestleMania 34 that caused him to miss several live events and put his WrestleMania status in doubt.

Other notable serious injuries in 2018 include but are not limited to Aleister Black (95 matches), Sin Cara (113 matches), Fandango (147 matches), Nia Jax (154 matches), Samoa Joe (114 matches), Randy Orton (146 matches), and Erick Rowan (100 matches). Currently, the following superstars are sidelined with some sort of injury, some more serious than others: Bliss, Banks, Fandango, Jordan, Sunil Singh, Matt Hardy, Rowan and Tamina. Recently added to that list is Kevin Owens (157 matches), one of WWE's biggest workhorses and a star who is now sidelined due to a knee injury.

That list doesn't even include stars who recently returned from injury, including Big Show, Jax, Orton, Ambrose, Ruby Riott, Daniel Bryan, Primo Colon, Liv Morgan and Flair. As pointed out by the Observer, one of the main contributing factors to WWE's high injury rate is that its superstars typically wrestle a substantial amount of singles matches, putting their bodies at greater risk for injury. For example, New Japan Pro Wrestling's Kazuchika Okada, arguably the company's top star, wrestled just 18 singles matches in 2017 while Styles wrestled 139 during that same span.

NJPW is known for putting its high-profile wrestlers in more tag team matches than most other top pro wrestling organizations, which some have viewed as a possible solution to WWE's recent injury woes. Of course, there will always be a debate about whether WWE needs an off-season, a debate that seems to come up at least a few times a year, especially when there seems to be an unusually high number of injuries. The problem is, a big part of WWE's appeal and one of the main reasons why it was able to sign a pair of blockbuster TV deals is that it has no off-season and delivers consistent content 52 weeks per year.

That makes a traditional sports-style off-season incredibly unlikely, which means WWE would have to get creative in order to give its superstars more off time. One solution would be for the company to have staggered offseasons, where only a handful of stars are off for a set number of weeks, and when they come back, a different set of stars gets a break. That solution might benefit the entire roster by reducing the number of injuries and improving morale without noticeably affecting the quality of WWE's rosters or its programming.

The bottom line is that WWE has been dealing with an unusually high number of significant injuries over the past few years, and some sort of change must be made.

What that change is? Well, that's up to WWE.

Blake Oestriecher is an elementary school teacher by day and a sports writer by night. He’s a contributor to@ForbesSports, where he primarily covers WWE. You can follow him on Twitter@BOestriecher.

I'm a contributor for the SportsMoney team at Forbes, where I'll examine the interesting effect that sports have on business...and vice versa. I graduated from Louisiana State University in 2010 with a degree in journalism and a minor in English, and during my time in Baton ...